


Youth, C.E. 73

by bricksandbones



Category: Gundam SEED Destiny
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 02:43:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6405559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bricksandbones/pseuds/bricksandbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miriallia finds a girl in a ZAFT uniform, and she is young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Old work from 2013.

Ezra is not a hero, despite her name. She has known this from the start. She is a soldier, a killing machine in a red coat, and she consoles herself by saying that she does only what needs to be done.

 

It is easy enough to believe this at the academy, where strength and speed and precision are the only things that matter and her resignation manages to pass for mental fortitude. Still, she feels doubt even then, welling forth from the springs of the subconscious she has all but buried. She puts it down to the incongruence between her previous occupation as a medical student and the one she is trying for now. This, despite the fact that there is no real inconsistency behind the values motivating both choices: she does this for glory, for honour, to justify her father's pride (not to mention pacifism) and above all because _she is capable_ (and knows so) and _it has to be done._

 

None of this changes the fact that, during the exams, the psyche test is the only assessment Ezra is remotely anxious about.

 

\---

 

Ezra will admit to having been surprised when she received a letter stating that she had passed - all assessments, psyche included - with flying colours. Further down, the same letter informs her of her assignment to a ZAKU Phantom, in the Joule squad. She recognises the dread that builds up in her gut - it is as though she is looking over the edge of the cliff only to realise that she has _crossed_ it somehow and is falling. She has met Yzak Joule in the distant past and seen him command in person; she does not think she will like him.

 

But it matters not, in the end, whether she likes him; she _is_ a soldier now, the finest of the butchers in her red coat. (She has often wondered why red, and why _that_ shade particularly when they "graduate" from murderers-in-training to merely murderers, because the uniform she has received seems specifically designed to hide blood. The blood of the people she is meant to kill? She does not think so; the odds are that they will be too far away, incinerated in their steel coffins before their blood can stain her hands. She thinks, perhaps, that they are meant to hide _hers._ She is a ZAFT redcoat, the best of the best; more important than the greens and a killing puppet more directly than the commanders and captains in their purple and white. To be seen to bleed would be bad for morale. They are not invulnerable, of course, the statistics would tell you that. But maintaining the illusion of invulnerability is just another one of their many duties.)

 

With that in mind, she counts the days - exactly three - of leave she has been given and spends those days with her father, or at the cafe sipping black coffee, or in her bed trying to finish a book because it may well be the last she will ever read. On the fourth day she puts on her uniform and reports for duty.

 

She finds that she had been entirely right: she does not like Yzak Joule. Someone has told the commander about her aim with her left hand and he demands that she prove it. Ezra bristles at his skepticism about her carefully cultivated skill. She demonstrates it to perfection nevertheless, and watches his incredulity shift into musing into an oddly disapproving frown. 

 

"You're showing off," he tells her, and the red mist of anger that rises up to surprise her is because she acknowledges that, yes, she probably is.

 

And Ezra Clyde determines to work on her left-handed aim to the extent where it becomes _natural,_ and _useful,_ and applicable on the battlefield, as opposed to "showing off". Target practice in the small hours of the morning becomes a regularity, and she works on her right-handed aim as well. There will be no mistakes, she thinks as she fires probably entirely too fast. The accuracy of her aim surprises even her. If Commander Joule wants a killing machine - very well then, he will _get_ one.

 

The day comes when achieving perfect aim with her right hand is easy and, with her left, _almost_ so. She doesn't quite miss the knowing looks her commander gives her occasionally, but she _does_ miss the worry, and the pity. The truth is that Yzak Joule remembers only too well how she feels.

 

She doesn't quite get on with the other redcoat, Shiho Hahnenfuss; her fascination with mobile suit specifications and unwavering dedication to duty repel Ezra. She supposes that it is entirely defensive and somewhat spiteful on her part - she doesn't really care about either mobile suits _or_ the military, is here to do merely what she has to do, and is keenly aware of the fact despite usually being able to press that awareness to the back of her mind. She thinks that Shiho knows this too, and so doesn't bother getting to know her; she knows very well that this particular redcoat will either leave them or, failing which, die in the line of fire. 

 

Dearka, however, is a great relief. He has all sorts of hints and tips for making her ZAKU cooperate (she is not the only one who isn't fond of the clunky things) and jokes about every wildly inappropriate topic under the sun. Ezra suspects that Dearka Elsman is the final safety on Commander Joule's sanity. It sometimes surprises her how the ZAFT military establishment seem to know them all so well, given how _many_ of them there are even if one considers only the reds. Then again, she thinks, it might well _not_ be an issue of them being reds. They are the children of Supreme Court representatives, after all, and Joule and Elsman are newsworthy in themselves. 

 

It also makes her think it very possible that ZAFT has found her dispensable and sent her to the front lines to die, because she does not _really_ believe she passed the psyche assessment. Had she been entirely in her right mind, _she_ wouldn't have passed Ezra Clyde. 

 

She resigns herself to the fact, or tries. After all, she is a soldier and it will not be _too_ tragic, being cremated in that ugly metal box. And her uniform will hide most of the damage, were things to be otherwise. If nothing else, it will be an (ostensibly) honourable death; the citizens of PLANT will, she thinks, have the decency to refrain from pointing out the obvious facts to the contrary.

 

Ezra succeeds in fooling only herself. Yzak wonders if he is more a murderer now than ever when he sends her out on her first real mission.

 

Ezra does brilliantly: 19 enemy mobile suits down with barely a scratch on her ZAKU. The firing of the Requiem leaves them all shattered, however, and Yzak does not look up these statistics until well after the war. What he remembers seeing is Ezra curled in the cockpit of her machine, helmet off and collar undone, gasping for air like a fish out of water. Dearka extracts her from the cockpit and dispatches her to the sick bay amid protestations that she is not injured. 

 

"Ask for something to help you sleep," he orders brusquely, propelling her ahead with a rough thump on her back. "And _go to bed._ "

 

Ezra crawls under the covers in the room she shares with Shiho, hiding her head under the pillow. Shiho, who always copes, is the last person she wants to talk to. She sleeps fitfully and dares not venture out of her room; there are people on board the Rousseau with family in the stricken colonies and it fills her with guilt to think that _she_ of all people has been the one to have a nervous breakdown when her father is safely in Aprilius One.

 

They are ordered to attack the relay stations for the Requiem. The commander wants to know if she is fit for duty; she only says that she is as ready as she will ever be. It is the truth, at least. He deems it a good enough response and sends her on her way. And she does well by herself, despite managing to lose her beam assault rifle early on and having to rely on the beam tomahawks. Her first real conversation with Shiho ensues after the battle, mostly built around her outburst that the ZAKU Phantom is "a bloody joke". Dearka joins in, comparing it unfavourably with the Buster. Yzak feels a pang because he, too, thinks that the Duel would have compared favourably to his GOUF, despite being three generations old. He feels a tinge of resentment that the Chairman in his infinite wisdom (he has not really begun to doubt this yet) has chosen to pour ZAFT's resources into developing top-of-the-line mobile suits for a select few elites (the selection of whom leaves him bemused), while allowing the rest of his volunteer army to languish in ZAKUs and GOUFs. Shiho has been referring to the ZAKUs as "mobile coffins" lately and he is almost convinced the moniker will catch on. 

 

When the Rousseau docks in the PLANTs, Ezra is welcomed home by a courier delivering a notice of leave and a paper bag. The camaraderie she has built up with Shiho and the other pilots over the past few battles abruptly dissolves as they are reminded once again that she is the child of a Supreme Court representative, who is on the battlefield for the sake of family honour as much as anything - who has _options_ and a doting father even in the midst of the carnage. It is more than some of her fellow soldiers ever had or will ever have now. Yzak can see her think about protesting, but he does not miss the relief. 

 

"You're not needed here," he tells her harshly. "Go back to see your family." _Be glad you still have one._ "It's as good as anything else you can do right now," he adds eventually to soften the blow. "You've done well. _Go._ " What wouldn't he give to see his mother right now - but he has responsibilities. 

 

He catches a glimpse of Ezra in her civilian clothes as he escorts Lacus Clyne and is struck by how much more a child she seems, in a pale blue dress and impractical flat shoes. She looks fifteen, and the handgun she still carries with a soldier's gait seems incongruous.

 

Ezra has ten days of leave. Yzak throws himself into writing reports and restructuring and eventually manages to grasp three for himself and the rest of his team. He arrives home to find a food hamper and flowers: a large, ostentatious bouquet from Edward Clyde thanking him for taking "excellent care" of his daughter, and a smaller bunch of daffodils which say only that they _are_ from Ezra. He suspects the food hamper is also her doing; Edward Clyde has never struck him as a practical man. There is very little in it that he likes very much, but it is better than rations and saves him the trouble of doing the groceries when all he feels capable of is collapsing into bed and sleeping for a hundred years.

 

He finds later that Dearka and Shiho had received gifts of flowers and food as well. Edward Clyde is a giving man and it seems his daughter has inherited his generosity if nothing else. Ezra herself they do not see for months, because it transpires that she had been offered a place in the secret service (Yzak discovers this only after the fact) and had spent weeks in training only to declare at the end of it all that, absurdly, she missed her ZAKU. And as a matter of fact the Joule team has _kept_ her ZAKU, so she is transferred back. It is a testament to the entitlement inbred in the reds and the political families of PLANT that Ezra apparently does not think too much of this - Dearka, for his part, is furious with her for the first time because a green coat in the same situation would have been court-martialled. Ezra looks at him with an expression suggesting that he belongs to an alien species and goes, "I suppose". Dearka eventually finds a six-pack of strawberry cream soda on his bunk by way of apology. Remembering how little different he had been at fifteen, he accepts.


	2. Chapter 2

When Dearka first encounters Ezra Clyde, it is on a play date set up for them by their fathers. She is five, and he is nine years old and a little disappointed.

 

He had expected that his new playmate would be a boy. He'd wondered if this Ezra would be anything like Yzak; the names sounded alike and had melded together in his mind.

 

Instead, he had been confronted with a _girl,_ small even for her age, conventionally pretty in that Aryan, blond-and-blue-eyed way except for where her absurdly curly hair rose above her head in a sort of cotton-woolly halo.

 

"Well, what do you want to play, then?" he'd asked after their fathers had left, trying not to let the resentment show in his voice. He wished Yzak were there. 

 

She blinked at him before suddenly grabbing his hand.

 

"C'mere," she demanded in her high-pitched voice and dragged him up the stairs.

 

They ended up in Ezra's room, which seemed to be a library, music room, workshop and nursery all rolled into one. There was a small desk with a miniature science-lab kit set up in one corner, complete with microscope. Next to the microscope were two Petri dishes, one of which housed a large spider and the other, a number of beetles. There was an upright piano draped with red gingham-checked cloth. A mat in the far corner housed two chairs and a miniature table, on which stood a dollhouse and a teaset. Ezra's bed was typically girlish with drapes, pastel pink cushions and a riot of frills - but Dearka noted to his appreciation that the bed was unmade, the pool of blankets parting to make room for a stuffed dog and stethoscope: Ezra had been playing vet.

 

It was every inch the room of a very spoiled child. But what surprised him most was the bench she led him to on the far side of the room, obscured by the bed: it housed a toolbox, not merely pretend but the real thing, and a pile of screwdrivers and toy car parts. 

 

"Ezra broke her car," she said mournfully. "Daddy said he'd help fix it…" _but he doesn't have time._ He knew what she meant without her continuing, having lost count of the numerous times his own father had made and broken similar promises. 

 

"Will Dearka help?" She looked up at him through thick blond eyelashes. He was lost.  

 

He scratched the back of his head and smiled sheepishly.

 

"Er. Well. I've never done this before…but I'm sure we'll be able to do it!"

 

Ezra clapped her hands together once, laughing. "Yay! Thank you!" she squealed.

 

_This might be more fun than playing with Yzak after all._

 

Two hours later, the toy car was in more pieces than ever before and the children were curled up on a pile of cushions, fast asleep. 

 

Edward Clyde smiled as he tiptoed in to wake them. He might not have had much in common politically with Tad Elsman - but the man was honourable, and it seemed that he had raised his son well. 

 

"Kids," he called softly, shaking them gently. Ezra was the first to stir.

 

"Daddy!" she squealed, instantly brightening and stretching out her arms to be picked up. Obligingly, he took her in his arms and gave her a twirl. Dearka sat up, rubbing his eyes.

 

"Mr Clyde," he greeted politely. Then his gaze flickered to the car. "I'm sorry I couldn't fix it, Ezra. I think I made it worse."

 

"That's not fair," Ezra admonished. "Ezra helped. But Daddy knows how to fix it! Right, Daddy?" She looked expectantly at her father.

 

Dearka had to contain a laugh at her father's strained smile. 

 

"I will have it fixed good as new somehow." It was an evasion and, surprisingly, five-year-old Ezra seemed to catch on. 

 

"As long as it's fixed, Daddy. Is it time for dins? Ezra's tummy's hungry," she complained, speaking of her stomach as if it were another person.

 

"Your tummy is telling you _you're_ hungry."

 

"No, tummy's hungry," she insisted. Her father laughed.

 

"As you please, princess. Yes, it's dinnertime - Dearka and his father will be joining us, would you like that?"

 

"Yay! Dearka's fun. Is Mr Elsman fun too?" she asked innocently. 

 

"Perhaps not as fun as his son, sweetheart. Adults tend not to be so much fun in general, hmm?"

 

"Uh-huh. But not _you,_ Daddy. Daddy's the funnest person ever."

 

"That's 'cause I'm your Daddy," he replied, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head. 

 

Edward Clyde wished with all his heart that his little girl would never have to grow up. 

 

\---

 

"You know, Ezra's a boy's name," Dearka ventured as he buttered a scone. "There ya go," he announced, passing it across the table.

 

"Thank you." Ezra smiled. "More tea?" 

 

"Thanks."

 

They were in her room again, five years later. The lab set and bench had been removed, and the miniature table and tea sets in the corner replaced with the full-sized ones they were using now. Their fathers were at the office and nowhere in sight; it was summer break and Dearka had come of his own volition to see an old friend. Yzak had been invited, but had declined the invitation last minute to do some internship work for his mother. 

 

"I was named Ezra Leander Clyde," Ezra said suddenly, smiling slyly at his surprise over her middle name. "Ezra after Daddy's brother and Leander after Mother's father," she recited. "Uncle Ezra was an army doctor."

 

"Hmm." 

 

"Were you named after anyone in particular?"

 

"I don't think so. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing the old man would do - cutting ties with Earth and all."

 

He caught a flicker of disapproval in Ezra's eyes.

 

"I wonder if that's really the best idea," she murmured. 

 

"To be honest?" he told her. "I wish it weren't. But I think it might be."

 

"Yes, I suppose that's a fair assessment." She ventured a frail smile. Many things had changed, including her conviction that her father could and would fix everything and that he was the "funnest person" she knew, but the old obsession with fairness had not. 

 

"Izzy?" 

 

"Yes?"

 

"Don't think too much," he advised. He had heard about her depression, that had taken her out of school and had to be hushed up amongst the elites of PLANT. She was meant to have been in convalescence, but it was difficult for him to miss the signs: her hair, darker blond than before but absurdly curly again when it had been sleekly styled for years; the bitten nails; the thrown-together nightdress and bed jacket when she had always been one to insist on wearing her best for guests. 

 

"What would you have worn if Yzak was coming?" he asked and cursed himself as soon as the words escaped his lips.

 

She cocked her head to one side.

 

"I don't know, is he the sort of person who would mind?"

 

Dearka hesitated. "We-ell, not _mind,_ exactly…but I'm sure he'd have _something_ to say about it."

 

Ezra shrugged. "That's all right then. I don't mind."

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Miriallia finds a girl in a ZAFT uniform, and she is young.

 

\---

 

In CE 78, barely four years after the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, Chairwoman Clyne prepares for a symbolic handover of the Council following a chaotic semblance of a peace process. Orb reaffirms its neutrality. The Earth Alliance is dissipated and strangely silent; a civil war of sorts waiting to happen. The end of the war is celebrated with slowly diminishing fervour. 

 

People learn to move on.

 

Miriallia Haww, celebrated freelance journalist, arrives in the PLANTs to document both the memorial services as well as the transfer of power to Councilwoman Louise Leitner.

 

She doesn't like Leitner at all, but muttered protests about despotism have arisen despite the continued popularity of Terminal's former leading figures and the handover has to happen. 

 

Dearka Elsman greets her at the airport, conspicuous in the uniform of a black-coated commander. 

 

"Hey, Mir," he says, as if they have seen or spoken to each other sometime in the past year. 

 

"Hey." A smile finds its way onto her face, unbidden, albeit tired. She notes the by-now familiar shadows under his eyes, the hollows in his cheeks, and doesn't bother to ask how he knew of her impending visit. "How is ZAFT treating you?"

 

"Oh, same as usual. Trying to work us all to death as always, pfft," he jokes, but she wonders if he isn't secretly glad of the fact. Dearka would not be the first person she'd met who tried to work themselves into an early grave, as if in penance. 

 

Others find it all too easy to forget - or perhaps they never realise - that Miriallia, too, is a war veteran in her own way. It is part of the reason she never stays in one place for too long - settling down defies her nature after what seems like an eternity of fighting for her life upon an open sea, or in the endless bleakness of space. Life before the war seems like a distant dream, and life after it feels like a hallucination even now.

 

The brief peace between the wars did not help; it is difficult for her to convince herself that the fighting will not break out again any day.

 

She is not entirely convinced that she is against it. It seems to her that war is the only way she knows to live.

 

The soldiers she comes upon in her work seem young - all too often they are recruits who graduated too late to play any more than a nominal role in the previous war. It is more pronounced in the PLANTs than elsewhere; the legal age for enlisting is only fifteen, and many of the redcoats she meets seem children still.

 

She first sees Ezra Clyde of the Joule Team during the memorial service - one of the best of the new lot, she's told. She is part of the guard rather than the parade, blond and blue-eyed and almost elfin, looking out of place in her red coat amongst a sea of older, larger men. Still, she stands straight and tall, fingers poised on her handgun, watching her commander (who is watching Chairwoman Clyne) with eagle eyes. Oh, there is nothing wrong with her _competence._ Miriallia can tell. She is a trained soldier and can shoot - is quite prepared to shoot - a man from a hundred paces, better than Miriallia with her lack of formal training could ever do. At the same time, however, she is sure that Lt. Clyde has never heard someone die. 

 

They have dinner together the next evening. Rather, Dearka suggests she have dinner with him and Yzak as "old friends", she wonders if Yzak can introduce her to his protege, and the two are _left_ to have dinner after Commanders Joule and Elsman discover some supposed emergency, in spite of which Lt. Clyde is ordered to "stay, I don't need puppies getting in my hair". Ezra seems amused rather than offended, and in possible breach of protocol asks the men to "please be careful". She has lines beneath her eyes, but the eyes themselves are young; there is no shadow of death in them as she watches them leave.

 

Yes, Miriallia decides, looking over the cornflower blue dress the girl has decided to wear (despite the fact that she has her handgun), Ezra is young. Like she will never be again.

 

She wonders what Ezra makes of the veterans.

 

The question is answered by a tight little smile and the words, "I should hope never to be one" although everything she has heard about Lt. Clyde speaks to the contrary. 

 

"I signed up to be a soldier. I would like to do my job well. And I admire my superiors" - and she has more than mere admiration for Commander Joule, Miriallia thinks - "but I should not like for war to be the only thing on my mind at any time." She pauses. "War, or the threat thereof."

 

"But then, perhaps I haven't understood what it means to be a soldier." Ezra shrugs fluidly and dismantles the ribs that are her dinner with efficiency and grace Miriallia wishes she had. The efficiency is learned, born of years in the army trying to get food into one's stomach as quickly as possible, and the grace a relic of a privileged upbringing; Edward Clyde is Representative of Aprilius Five and Ezra his golden child.

 

Were her father to have his way, Ezra will never understand. And that is for the best, Miriallia thinks. 

 

They part amicably.

 

A news report notifies Miriallia the next day that Commanders Elsman and Joule (newsworthy because of their status both as war heroes and criminals) have been injured the previous night in an attempt on Chairwoman Clyne's life. Though the culprits were caught and the attack stopped in time, it is clear that there are traitors in ZAFT. The administration is furious. Miriallia receives a call from Ezra asking her to be careful and informing her that the redcoat has been assigned as her personal bodyguard until her departure.

 

This is as the rest of the Joule team is deployed to patrol the vicinity of Aprilius One. Miriallia wonders if Ezra feels any resentment. Ezra only laughs.

 

"The Commander's been trying to keep me off the frontline for _ages._ He says I should never have passed my psyche assessment; that I was rushed through the system at the last moment when they needed more manpower and feared the war wouldn't end." 

 

Miriallia finds this believable, somehow. 

 

The following couple of days pass without incident, and Dearka and Yzak are discharged from hospital into desk duty while they recuperate.

 

"Just a few scratches, Mir. Nothing to worry about," Dearka tells her on the phone. How is Yzak, she wants to know. "Just as cranky as usual," he replies, laughing. "Does little Ezra want to know?" Miriallia agrees that she probably does. "She has the biggest crush," Dearka informs her. "It's a little bit sad, really." Not least because acting on it would go against all notion of ethics. "We've been trying to convince her to go back to med school," he says, and Miriallia feels a pang, because it strikes her that "little Ezra" is young, and has a bright - _normal -_ future ahead of her like Miriallia will never have.

 

"Daddy," Miriallia catches her saying on the phone late one night. "You know very well I'm on assignment even though I'm in the PLANTs. I don't have _time. Don't you dare_ speak to my Commander. _No,_ Papa. I'm in enough trouble as it is. Do you realise that I'm practically wearing the Joule Team equivalent of the dunce's cap? I am that one pathetic redcoat who _wasn't meant to be_ and has to be _babysat._ " It is a teenage girl's conversation with her father, and Mirialla can't help but smile.

 

She is not surprised to hear from Dearka a few months later that Ezra has re-enrolled in medical school with the intention of becoming a military doctor. "I'm little sad to see her go - that girl knew what she was doing in a ZAKU. Still, it's for the best." He mentions that he is being transferred to Orb to oversee part of the global nuclear disarmament programme. "Can I see you sometime?" he asks, and she finds herself saying yes.

 

Dearka gets a call late one night when they are watching a movie in her apartment. It is Yzak, talking loudly enough that Miriallia can hear him without half having to try.

 

"How does she know where I _live?"_ he demands, voice rising in both loudness and pitch.

 

Dearka holds the phone gingerly away from his ear.

 

"Why are you surprised? She _did_ get an offer from the Intelligence Corps, you know."

 

"But - but!" Yzak sputters, then groans. "And what am I supposed to _do,_ Elsman!"

 

"That depends on you?" Dearka suggests reasonably.

 

"Not helping! Argh, how is this _possible_ \- I used to make her _cry!"_

 

"You made lots of people cry, Yzak," his friend replies drily. "I think, merely on the basis of probability given the sheer _number_ of them, you'd expect one of those people to one day confess to being quite fond of you."

 

"You sound like you knew about this," Yzak accuses.

 

"It was not entirely the least obvious thing in the world."

 

"Why didn't you tell me then! I could've requested a transfer!"

 

"You seemed like you would be happier not knowing," Dearka remarks. "Also, she wasn't likely to say a peep while she under your command; you were in no danger."

 

"Dearka, I _can't."_

 

"Then _say so."_

 

 _"Easier said than done."_ The phone beeps as the line goes dead.

 

"Well, that was interesting." They never do hear from either Yzak or Ezra about the outcome.

 

The PLANTs are thrown into an uproar three weeks later at the assassination of Edward Clyde, one of the foremost advocates of nuclear disarmament in the Supreme Council. Miriallia feels a rising sense of foreboding. Dearka is unusually quiet. 

 

"Ezra had no-one but her father, you know," he tells her that night as they lie in bed together. "She never got on with people very well. I tried to get through to her today, but her mobile's switched off and it seems she's cut the landline to her house." 

 

The brief statement she gives the media the next day suspends their worry for a little while. Dearka manages to get through to her in the afternoon.

 

"I'm fine, Commander Elsman," she says in a tone too flat for their liking. "Commander Joule has asked that I be put on suicide watch, funnily enough. It's odd how he always seems to think I have a death wish."

 

"You _do,_ Izzy." Edward Clyde was a friend of his father's and he has always known this girl in one capacity or another. She'd struck him as fragile even as a child.

 

"Hmm," she replies, and that is the end of that. 

 

Miriallia asks if she would like to come to Orb, to get her mind off things and distance herself from the tragedy. Ezra says she will think about it. (They both know she won't, not really.)

 

Dearka puts a call through to Yzak.

 

"Oh, she has no intention of killing herself," he says, sounding weary beyond his years. "But she could've fooled me. She didn't mention she's broken a leg throwing herself off the stairs, now did she?" 

 

"Erm, no."

 

"Well. It's all very hush-hush at the minute. Of course, no-one'd be too surprised and there'd even be some sympathy if news were to get out about her being unstable, but we'd hope to avoid that considering that military types are supposed to have nerves of steel. Which she evidently doesn't. I _told_ you that girl had problems."

 

"I was never in any doubt."

 

"Hmm."

 

"How _did_ it go, then? I'm guessing you said no."

 

A pause.

 

"What _else_ could I have said, Dearka? Babysitting is a luxury I can't afford."

 

"And yet you appear to be doing it anyway," Dearka points out.

 

Investigations reveal that the assassination was personally-motivated, charges are pressed, and the rest of the world heaves a collective sigh of relief. There is a grand state funeral from which Ezra is conspicuously absent, followed by a trial which she does not follow, because "my father is dead and I fail to see how it should matter to me if someone should die for the crime, because nothing will bring him back", she says on national television. There is resignation in her eyes; Ezra Clyde is alone, and not young any longer.

 

Slowly, she pieces her life back together: graduates absurdly early from medical school, gets a post as an resident in the respected oncology department of an eminently civilian hospital in October Three; in other words, places herself as conceivably far from the military and politics as it is possible to be. Before leaving for her post she sends her old Commander a card, cake and flowers. "Thank you for your consideration", she says on paper. _Sorry for the trouble,_ and _I hereby remove myself from your jurisdiction,_ are what he understands.

 

Good. It is for the best, he tells himself. He thinks they are probably not fated to meet again.

 

But they do. Years later, at Dearka and Miriallia's wedding; he is best man, she is a guest, blending into the crowd in a pale blue dress.  Ezra is wry, with an artificial, enforced calm, and her hair several shades lighter - he thinks she has been going grey. He learns she is a consultant by now, and deduces from her tired eyes that she has been fighting a different kind of war. He is relieved to find her no longer a child.

 

"And what do you do now?" she asks, and really she ought to know because he is the National Advisor on Defence to the Supreme Council but she has studied ignorance of the military up till now.

 

He explains. 

 

"It suits you," she remarks. "Thinking about defence, that is." 

 

He is surprised, because very few people had thought so at the time of his appointment.

 

"You never were all that keen on people being killed. Case in point." She gestures to herself. "I really can't thank you enough," and her smile is wry and self-deprecating. 

 

"Don't," he advises, then excuses himself to go in search of Dearka.

 

"I didn't know you kept in touch."

 

" _I_ didn't. It turns out Mir did," Dearka replies, shrugging. "I would've liked to, but I couldn't find any contact details for the life of me. Journalists must have their means."

 

"Probably," Yzak agrees, but privately thinks it unlikely that Miriallia could have outsmarted a former ZAFT redcoat who had been offered a prestigious position in the Intelligence Corps. No, he decides, it is far likelier that Ezra had taken the initiative. In any case, he manages to extract said contact details from Miriallia before the newlyweds leave on their honeymoon. A few memos are exchanged but the conversation eventually dies down; now that Ezra is merely _ex-_ military, they have very little in common any more.

 

Yzak starts seeing Shiho now that she is no longer his second-in-command. She has given up her ZAFT reds and gone on to carve out a successful career in the engineering corps, developing the next generation of mobile suits. He can tell from his mother's silence that she is not entirely pleased (her son is a Joule, and Shiho's father a nobody) but, having fought two wars, he is determined at least in his personal life to do exactly as he pleases. 

 

The council holds a ball. The outward frivolity masks undercurrents of tension; Leitner has been weeding out councillors lately and there is talk of a coup. Some in the Council discuss the possibility of striking the Atlantic Federation while it is weak; eliminating the threat once and for all. Yzak personally thinks _they_ pose the greater threat, but keeps this opinion to himself. There is a sudden flurry of gunfire; they are aiming for councillors. He is fast but not quite fast enough, and Shiho has to take down one of his own so-called "bodyguards". He sees another barrel aimed in their direction and is about to fire when a bullet from behind him gets the man first - headshot. Two more shots fired in rapid succession and a couple of others drop. The familiar tempo of it makes him wonder.

 

He turns to find Ezra, in her little blue, bloodstained dress, gun in her left hand. It turns out she has never left off carrying firearms. 

 

"You're right-handed, aren't you?" is the only thing he can think of to say to her hours later in the hospital. He remembers being told about the new recruit joining his team: a right-hander who could achieve near-enough perfect aim with her left. Despite her best efforts to pretend otherwise, he had recognised it as a learned skill more than a natural gift - a small figure in the shooting range had given the game away, firing shot after shot, night after night, with rigidly enforced regularity. The scores turn out much the same, but he knows by heart the differences in rhythm when she shoots with her right hand versus her left. The latter is rigid and careful, the former nearly care _free._ For Ezra more than most, the technical parts of killing a man are easy. 

 

" _You_ know, Commander," she says in the present, and her reply irks him because it implies he knows more about her than anyone - although, he realises, now that her father is dead, he probably does - and also because of the reflexive address.

 

"I'm not your commander," he snaps. "How are you going to work with that arm? And why were you there?"

 

"It won't be a problem,” she assures him. "Tad Elsman knew my dad." As if that explained everything, Yzak thinks irritably, then is ashamed to realise that as far as the Supreme Council is concerned, it probably actually _does._  

 

He is not entirely surprised when, two weeks later, he receives a chip from an anonymous source, containing Louise Leitner's entire life history. Certain things in it interest him.

 

Ezra hands in her resignation and disappears. Yzak gets a memo informing him of Terminal's return to active duty. A tense six months precede a remarkably civilised coup d'etat carried out by supporters of the erstwhile Chairwoman Clyne. He is not sure whether Lacus (and Terminal) merely pretends not to have been involved, but she resumes her position as Chairwoman gracefully enough. He encounters Ezra at the inauguration; she blends in somehow with the reporters and he would have missed her but for the blue ribbon in her hair.

 

"Are you working for Terminal?" he demands to know, catching her alone in a lift.

 

"If I were, I couldn't tell you," she replies mildly. He takes that for a "yes".


	4. Chapter 4

When Cagalli listens to Shinn talk about his new recruit, she thinks that Ezra Leander Clyde must be a very unusual boy.

 

It is not until she meets said recruit that the gears click into place and she realises that this is Edward Clyde's _daughter,_ and clearly not a boy at all.

 

Yes, she reflects upon closer examination: Ezra Clyde is a conventionally pretty girl with a somewhat unconventional name. Ezra is also conventionally demure, although Cagalli rather suspects that the primness is a veneer assumed out of habit, concealing an individual with edges rougher than one would expect. Ezra has been a soldier, after all, and some of the affectations she assumed in the military have proven difficult to shed, like wearing men's cologne and referring to acts of fornication in times of distress (if only in assumed privacy). 

 

The conventional prettiness leads to her assignment as a spy under the name of Isabella Young. 

 

And while Ezra Clyde is a soldier who still habitually showers with a bar of deodorant soap, consumes mystery meat and downs coffee (mostly dregs) black and without question, Isabella is an absurdly girly girl. She wears pink and cream and yellow dresses, not blue, and frothy floral perfumes instead of the classic, austere scents Ezra still favours for special occasions, but Dearka looks at Isabella and thinks that he has seen it all before. He has seen it all, except for the strange frankness in her eyes that Ezra lost somewhere between being five and ten years old. 

 

He thinks she allows it because Ezra tells herself that Isabella isn't real. 

 

He wants desperately to remind her that she _is,_ because Isabella is just another side of a real person. But it doesn't matter anyhow, because Isabella may be frank but she is not involved. Isabella doesn't care; is not wound into knots over honour and dignity and decency in the way that Ezra was. Isabella doesn't care because Isabella doesn't really exist that way, and Isabella can be as open as she likes about Isabella because that is akin to being open about nothing at all. Isabella _is_ open about Isabella, in fact, and goes to painstaking lengths to construct a consistent backstory in excruciating detail. Isabella is a Coordinator, daughter of an Orb army colonel and niece of an Orb army doctor. Terminal figures that a military family background will go some way to explaining Isabella's perplexing ability to mimic (if only jokingly) perfect drill. Isabella holds a degree in biomedical science but works in retail, or more specifically a tea shop catered towards the very posh. 

 

Isabella does slip, just once. Once, in Orb, when a car bomb goes off outside the shop, she simultaneously hisses "what the _fuck?"_ and darts forward rather than back to check for casualties. "Bloody buggering -" is the next thing she says when she sees the unidentifiable remains of (probably) several people splattered on the sidewalk and the very-much-identfiable upper torso of a middle aged man, still breathing. And Isabella in her pretty yellow dress is the one to call the ambulance and the police and explain events as far as possible with enforced calm. "Fucking hell," says one of the officers when he arrives on the scene, just before he cringes at having sworn in the presence of a lady. "That's a bit of an understatement," replies Isabella with a wry, albeit shaky, smile.

 

Isabella retreats into her room above the teashop to make a cup of tea. Making the report to HQ takes an icy Alice blue nightdress and Ezra, ever more unstable but a soldier still.

 


End file.
